The official start of the High School golf season is a few days away, but it would be difficult to tell the golfers on the 22 teams playing in the annual Red Raider Invitational at the Greenville Country Club’s Riverside course it was only an exhibition.

The field of 22 teams included 3 of the 4 schools ranked number one in their classification’s pre-season poll.

Thirteen additional teams will start the season in one of the four classification top-10s released by the South Carolina Golf Coaches Association earlier this month.

Pre-seaason SC Golf Coaches Poll: https://scgolfclub.com/2024/02/23/hanna-flora-wren-and-christ-church-top-pre-season-poll/

Last year North Augusta used an amazing performance to blow away the field and served notice they were a contender for the state championship they won at the end of the year.

Tl Hanna played in last year’s Red Raider unranked, but after a strong second place finish the Yellow Jackets got into the rankngs and then kept moving up and brought the AAAAA State Championship back to Anderson at the end of the year.

Reviewing the final standings in the 2024 Red Raider it appears the coaches who put together the pre-season ranking knew what they were doing.

Christ Church, the perenile favorite to win the Class A title showed they are ready to add another state championship to the record number of titles the Cavaliers have earned over the years.

Led by William Jennings, the future Alabama golfer who is ranked among the top-5 juniors in the country, the Cavaliers held off the top ranked AAAAA team from Hanna to win the tournament by a shot.

Jennings claimed medalist honors with a 3-under par 68 for a two shot victory over Hanna’s Bennett Scaletta.

Last year both golfers won their classification individual championships and can be considered favorites again this year..

Jennings, who finished 8th in a national AJGA event in Texas last weekend is looking forward to another good year with his high school teammates.

“We’ve got everybody back from last year’s team and we have two new first time players who are pretty solid,” Jennings noted. “Our team is going to be like it was a few years ago with good seniors and some good young players coming along” added Jennings.

The Cavaliers 298 team total included Charlie Reyner’s 72, a 78 by Groves Williams, Banks Williams carded an 80 while Heyward Jennings chipped in with an 81 to help earn the one-shot victory.

The highly ranked Jennings may miss a tournament or two to play in upper level national junior events,, but playing with and for his high school teammates is both fun and important to Jennings.

“High School golf is different than the events I play,. It is fun and serious at the same time., I enjoy playing high school golf,” said Jennings.

This year the Cavaliers have a new head coach as Cody Robertson moves up from the JV team.

“I’m 1-0 as the head coach, thats pretty good,” he joked.

As the JV coach for several years Robertson has helped his players learn how to manage their game around the course and there is always room for even the best players to get a little better.

“How do you coach the kind of players we have? You keep things calm and concentrate on one shot at a time. We had a couple of blow-up holes today so now we need to fix that and get better,”added the new Cavaliers coach.

After the Cavaliers and Hanna the leader board had 8 teams within 10-shots of the lead.

Midlands power Lexington made the trip to the Upstate and tied a young Spartanburg team for third place at 302.

A young, but veteran team welcomed Davis Petty to its lineup. The McCraken 7th grader was playing in his first high school match,

Petty who has been winning age classification events since he was 8-years old shot a 4-over par 75

Blue Ridge finished in front of a Wren team that is projected to be the top team in AAA this year to round out the top-five.

High School matches start to count next week with the championships set for early May around the state.

The tournament did not provide detailed scoring. Here are the team scores and the top individuals